For the past three years, pet owners have been living in fear after many stories in the UK media about the prolific 鈥淢25 cat killer鈥� or 鈥淐roydon cat killer鈥�. The culprit seemed to be encircled by the M25 motorway, after first striking in Croydon to the south of the capital. Reports of deaths later spread much more widely.
The 鈥渒iller鈥� is accused of slaughtering some 500 cats, 鈥渓eaving their bodies in plain sight to 鈥榟orrify鈥� people鈥�. Post mortem reports reveal that they were killed by 鈥渂lunt trauma鈥� and, bizarrely, the perpetrator is said to wait at the crime scenes, undetected, until the bodies of his victims have cooled and their blood congealed before beheading them or cutting off their tail, leaving the rest behind.
A criminal psychologist has even warned that the killer could turn his attention to humans after getting 鈥渂ored of killing animals鈥�. Apparently, animal killers have 鈥渄ark and deviant sexual fantasies鈥�.
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In the face of mounting pressure from the press and animal rescuers, the police set up Operation Takahe. Yet despite of headless cats, no one has been caught. The lack of success was to be expected鈥� because there is no 鈥渒iller鈥�.
Been here before
Even more surprisingly, this bizarre scenario is not new. The last headless cat scare in Britain was in the 1990s, when the perpetrator was said to be collecting skulls for satanic rituals. Then, as now, the police mounted a large-scale manhunt after the vets who examined the bodies assured them that the heads had been cut off with a sharp knife.
Yet at that time, when an RSPCA inspector brought me a sack of the headless cats to examine, it took just a couple of minutes to convince him that a cut from a knife was very different to the work of a hungry聽fox, and that this was the latter.
At the outset of the current investigation, I told the police that this is not news and certainly not a crime. Cats have long been killed by vehicles, and we have known for decades that foxes chew the head or tail off carcasses, including dead cats and other foxes.
Foxes have weak jaws and cannot easily break up a carcass. So they start chewing with their carnassials 鈥� sharper molars at the side of their mouth 鈥� at one end or the other, where they can more easily get a grip. Sheep farmers are all too aware that this is exactly what foxes do with dead lambs. They are all easy meals for a scavenger.
Roaming into danger
The only surprise is how few, rather than how many, 鈥渕utilated鈥� cats have been reported. One pet insurance company. Even if only a third are killed rather than injured, that is still a quarter of a million dead cats in the last three years, of which only one in 500 were scavenged by foxes based on the 鈥渃at killer鈥� reports.
So what are the police expected to do? They can hardly start tasering scavenging foxes. As a number of studies have shown, , particularly at night: this greatly increases their chances of being run over. But asking cat owners to curtail their pets seems to be a lost cause.
The really exasperating aspect of the whole issue is that it has been driven by media hype and misunderstanding rather than scientific expertise. But I should look on the bright side. Animal charities . I claim the reward: the serial killer is the usual suspect, road traffic, with foxes performing the final rites.
- Stephen Harris recently retired as a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Bristol, UK. Having studied fox behaviour for 50 years, he is recognised worldwide as an expert on them.
